New Republic’s Noam Scheiber says the “security mom” phenomenon is bunk, and he’s got a convincing set of numbers from public polls. He even gets CBS’s Kathy Frankovic to note that Bush’s lead among women in her post-convention poll, which fueled the “security mom” craze, was a short-lived… But what about the private polls of the candidates? They tend to be more expensive and elaborate than public polls–and the Kerry advisers quoted in this NYT piece (even Scheiber’s hero, fellow debunker Diane Feldman) don’t seem wildly confident that they aren’t losing more women than men.
Mickey, I thought you couldn’t rely on the NYT to get so much as a quote right, and you’re reading something like “doesn’t seem wildly confident that they aren’t….” into an NYT piece?